Awakened Swarm
by erttheking
Summary: In the middle of the First Contact War, humanity is on the brink of losing a planet to alien control when something emerges from the shadows. A threat thought long vanquished. One hungry for revenge.


The children were singing. A single, harmonious chorus. The Queen stopped for a moment to simply appreciate the pure beauty of it. For so long the galaxy had been devoid of this song. First, it had been corrupted by the sour, yellow note that had seeped into her kind, and then the war had silenced the galaxy altogether. She could remember the song from her mother and her mother's mother's memories, but for the longest time, she had never heard it herself. She had been born on a derelict spaceship, alone, forced to make repairs and hide away on a faraway planet. Countless light-years away from the nearest Mass Relay and the Council. Then she had begun to hatch.

First, she had had children of her own, enough to start a basic colony. Then the time had come for her to lay other Queens. After a year or two, they had advanced enough to assemble primitive spacecraft. Not enough to cross the stars, but enough to spread to the corners of the system they now called home and mine it for resources and settle the other planets. Another five years and there were thriving Rachni colonies on all habitable planets and mining outposts on the others. And they had found Element Zero.

After that, they were able to begin constructing ships that were capable of faster than light travel. Many of the younger Queens wished to expand back in the direction of the Mass Relay she had fled through, but she had forbidden it. She had intercepted many civilian transmissions before she had made her decision to flee deep into unexplored space. The Council still feared them, doubtless viewed them as a threat after the war, and would attack them again on sight. So, instead, the Rachni expanded in the opposite direction, further and further away from the Mass Relay. Logistics were made more complicated as a result, but it was safer. Her children and her daughter's children grew and sang.

For over two thousand years, they had grown. Once empty worlds were now overflowing with Rachni and their creations, over a hundred worlds with plans to colonize more. And yet, the Queen could not help but look out over everything that had been created and feel incomplete. She could remember the countless worlds that her mothers had seen, the massive distances they had traveled through the Mass Relays. The galaxy was more massive than they ever could have imagined, and she and her children were relegated to a tiny corner of it. Eventually, they would reach a point where expanding without the aid of Mass Relays would cause expansion to result in diminishing returns, as well as the Rachi spreading themselves thin. It would not come for centuries, but it was a looming issue. And the Queen intended to solve it before it tore her children apart.

Countless solutions had been discussed between her and the younger Queens, many of them half solutions at best. These talks had continued while the children had continued to multiply and new worlds were settled. Then word had reached them. The Council was at war with itself. The Krogan, the warrior caste of the Council that had been the reason for the Rachni's fall, had turned on their leaders to gain fresh territory. The Queen had watched with great interest, but also fear. The Krogan multiplied almost as fast as her children did. If they overthrew the Council, they might grow to levels far too large for the Rachni to ever overcome.

Thankfully, the Krogan had lost the war. The Council had gained a new warrior caste, the Turians, and used them to defeat their dissenters. In the process, the Krogan had been reduced to a shadow of their former selves. The ones who had ensured the Rachni's fall were no longer a threat. And an idea had been put into the Queen's mind. Her mothers had been slaughtered by the Council, they freely settled the territory that had once belonged to the Rachi. Their homeworld had been bombarded into a lifeless husk by the Council.

Why were her children hiding while the Council roamed free?

It was then that she had she had made her decision. Her children would never be truly safe so long as the Council was the dominant power in the Milky Way. The second that they were all discovered, the old war would be reignited. There was even a chance that the Council may return the Krogan to their former glory. Conflict with the Council was inevitable. The only logical course of actions was to ensure that she and her children were victorious.

Once again, she listened to her children sing. They had a massive armada at the ready, thousands of warships strong, and with even more transport ships ready to transport the members of her warrior caste. An invasion that she had spent centuries planning for. Supply lines were ready, enough warriors had been bred to prepare for unthinkable casualties, and shipyards would be able to build fresh ships without pause for years. Any further preparation would require further territory to be taken, something that they would take into account as the first Council worlds fell to them.

Her children were ready. She had done much to prepare them for this moment. In many ways, it was bittersweet. She had remembered when her first clutch had hatched. They had been so innocent then, simply moving about to establish a crude, makeshift camp. Gathering food and basic supplies. Now they were a society preparing for all-out war against a society they had already lost against. It brought the Queen no joy to know that, even if they won, billions of her children would not live to see that victory. The one silver lining to all of it was that this would be the last war. After this, nothing would exist to threaten them, and the generation born after the war would know nothing but comfortable safety. That was a goal that was worth any price.

She reached out to the other Queens. They were all standing by, many of them commanding portions of the united Rachni fleet, many handling the warrior caste, while the majority were keeping the worker caste running. They had been planning for this for centuries. Now was the time. She gave a command. A single work. "Forward."

XXXXX

General Williams wanted to vomit. Aliens were real, though that wasn't quite the bombshell it had been a few decades ago. Ever since the cache on Mars had been discovered, the answer to the long-standing question "are we alone in the galaxy?" had been given an answer. No, we are not. Still, it had given rise to a whole other set of questions, but the biggest among them having been "so where are they?" General Williams now had an answer to that. In orbit above Shanxi. Dropping rocks on his men every time they went out to scavenge for food and other supplies. He had liked it better when humans had been alone in the galaxy.

"General? Scouting team is back. I think they managed to avoid being detected." That was a fair statement to make, there hadn't been any tremors in the last hour. He and around fifty marines had set up a makeshift camp in the depths of a cave, pieces of military hardware scattered around it. It had been fortified so that the entrance was a chokepoint that could hold off a force in the hundreds, turrets and barricades lining their end of it, but at this point, the idea of making a last stand was just cute. The aliens hovering above them didn't need to come down and fight man to man. They just had to maintain orbit and fire every time one of his men poked their heads out.

The marine standing guard on the far end of their defenses slipped back into the cave. Three other marines rushed into the cave, each of them carrying a metal crate that rattled as they ran. They looked filthy, their armor having gone from gray to green and brown. General Williams had a very good feeling they had crawled most of the way to their destination and back. "We found an abandoned truck," the sergeant of the three wheezed, "looked like it was making a delivery to the local grocery store. A lot of it was picked over, but there was still some canned goods inside." She put her crate down, her two subordinates following suit.

General Williams got up from his makeshift command station, in other words, a crate he had turned into a desk with a short-range radio and a series of maps on top, and looked over the crates. Each was about half full of cans of various sizes, mainly vegetables, but with some preserved meats. "Good work men, this is another two days we survive. Someone, get these three some water. They've earned a double ration after what they put themselves through."

Announcing to a platoon as a whole that a few members were getting some special privilege almost always earned grumbling from the others. It spoke much about the gravity of the situation that there was not a word of complaint from anyone in the cave as their makeshift logistics officer moved over to their precious few barrels of water and poured out a double ration into canteens. Three teams had already not come back from scavenging. Every last one of them knew just how dangerous it was.

"Thank you, sir," the sergeant gasped, slumping to the ground as her canteen was handed to her. She downed half of her ration in under a minute. "The main colony looks like it's losing its shit. I think the aliens have a crude translation of our language worked out and they're telling the civies to stay put. Grammar is all messed up, but the message is getting through loud and clear. It looked like there was a riot, but we couldn't get close enough to make sure. A couple of trucks made a run for the wilds. I dunno, maybe they thought about hiding out on the far side of the continent, and the aliens slagged them."

The marine standing guard by the door snarled. "Figures that E.T. wouldn't have any regard for civilian life. What, are they trembling in their boots at the thought of losing track of a few farmers with shotguns?"

The sergeant shook her head. "No idea. But they said that things will continue this way until all military forces surrender." She scoffed bitterly. "They may as well have said that the siege won't be lifted until all soldiers assemble their own set of gallows. No way in hell this'll end any other way. I don't care how different an alien brain is from a human one, you don't fire unprovoked on research ships if you're the type to take prisoners."

General Williams nodded firmly, trying to ignore the uncomfortable, acidic feeling that was slowly eating away at his stomach. They were running out of food, they were low on supplies altogether, and they couldn't scavenge without risking getting themselves or civilians killed. There were two options available if things didn't change soon. Surrender or starvation. And if they all starved to death, the aliens might not know. They had no idea how many supplies the Alliance had sequestered away for holdouts. The siege might last for months with civilians killing each other out of sheer panic and desperation.

He wasn't sure it was their only option left. But if it came down to the two, there was a good chance every last soldier on the planet was going to die anyway. There was a good chance that all of his men would hate him for it, that humanity as a whole would hate him for it. But he wasn't going to ask over a million civilians to die for a token garrison. It just wasn't worth it.

"General! Activity in the sky!" the marine from the cave entrance shouted. "Somethings heading towards the surface!"

General Williams swore. "They bombarding us again? Trying to smoke us out?" He was about to order his men to take cover when the guard continued to speak.

"Negative! Too slow and uneven for bombardment. It looks like...General! It looks like wreckage!" Without another word, General Williams had grabbed the par of binoculars he had on his "desk" and charged towards the entrance of the cave. The second he saw a sliver of light, he pressed them to his eyes, his head arching to face the sky. The lookout was right. Flaming pieces of wreckage were pouring down from the sky, breaking up as they came. As they neared, he was able to make out the outline of them. Without a doubt, they were warships. They were too rigid to be human.

"Those are alien ships!" the lookout said, letting out a whoop of laughter as he did. "Hot damn, did the Alliance send a relief force? Are they breaking the siege?" Williams frowned as he watched the wreckage arc down in the distance. The Alliance navy would have followed standard operating procedure if they were lifting a siege. True, at no point in the Alliance's history had they been in a situation where there was a siege to lift, but its armed forces were drilled for all possible situations nevertheless. A transmission would've been sent to all ground forces to let them know that reinforcements were here and to let them know how they were expected to help. They had nothing but radio silence.

"It's not the Alliance," he said. "As if to prove his point, a few specks appeared in the distance. He had been part of the Alliance long enough to recognize a ship lowering itself after it had entered the atmosphere, but nothing about those ships followed Alliance protocol. What's more, countless more were starting to pop up. Before too long, dozens of them were in the air Spinning a dial on his binoculars, he pushed the magnification to its very max.

It was enough to give him a blurry look at the ship's hull. It was completely alien, both compared to Alliance ships, and, ironically, the aliens. It was hard to describe the design, it was almost hexagonal in nature. "Sir, I think I see escape pods. Looks like they may not land too far from here." General Williams gave a quick glance. Sure enough, small metal pods were raining down from high above. They were scattering off into random directions, but a few were heading in their general direction. One, disturbingly close. "Sir...what's going on? If it's not the Alliance, who are they? The same aliens but a different faction?

"Everyone, back inside," he said. He had no idea what trajectory that pod would take, and he wasn't taking any chances. The few marines that had been crowding around the entrance followed his lead, moving away from the entrance and back behind the protection of their defenses.

This quickly proved itself to be a wise decision. Mere seconds later, there was a deafening crash from outside, clouds of dirt flooding in through the entrance of the cave, buffeting their fields of view. "Switch to thermal!" General Williams said, wishing he had a helmet of his own instead of a tattered dress uniform. "We have a rare chance here. There's only one! Get out there and surround the pod. Take the passenger alive if possible! We need more intel on what's going on!"

At once, two dozen of his men charged out of the cave, weapons at the ready. Two of them were even heaving rocket launchers, the only precious heavy weapons they had managed to secure in their mad dash for safety. General Williams hoped they would be considered overkill in this situation. The rest of the marines stayed put, weapons at the ready in case anything came in. From outside the cave, there was a chorus of shouting that General Williams couldn't make out. Then a moment of silence as the dust cloud slowly began to vanish.

The sergeant who had been on scavenge duty poked her head back into the cave. "Pod had one passenger. It gave up its weapons without a fight. Engineers looked over the pod with their omni-tools. No traps that we can detect." She paused. "It wants to speak to our commanding officer. Sir, if you accept, I recommend a ten-meter distance at minimum at all times. It has claws and some sharp teeth. I also recommend weapons be trained on it at all times."

"Noted and agreed," General Williams said. Reaching to his side, he drew a sidearm, holding it in a relaxed position. "Still, let's not be too hasty. We only have the one captive and I doubt we'll be getting another anytime soon. Lead the way." Nodding, the sergeant raised her rifle and slowly moved out of the cave, General Williams right behind her.

The pod was a large one, if it had been on an Alliance vessel it would've been enough to hold a small squad's worth of soldiers. However, only one figure was standing next to the rigid, silver, smoking escape pod, its hands in the air. The Alliance Marines had formed a solid ring around the alien, two dozen weapons trained on it. The sergeant had been accurate in her description. The alien's fingers, three on each hand, each ended in a talon. It looked to be a few inches taller than the average human, something added by the odd hump it had that stretched over its head. It was hard to tell if that was part of the alien's biology or simply an aspect of its blue/silver armor.

General Williams stopped at the edge of the ring, looking at the alien. "Your kind has apparently decoded our languages to some degree," he said calmly. "We've been receiving translated communications from you. Can you understand me?"

The alien hesitated before speaking. "Mostly," it said. Its voice was soft, and General Williams wondered if that was a universal trait or if he was speaking with an alien female. Assuming the aliens had binary genders that was. "Decoding languages is complicated, even with state of the art computers working nonstop. My translator is programmed with the basics of all languages that were spoken in this planet's transmissions, but we did not get to the more complicated aspects. I ask you to keep this conversation simple."

"Right. Easily done," General Williams said, a little taken aback that a member of an aggressive race was asking him for accommodations like that in a semi-polite tone. "A few questions first, let's keep them simple. Who are you? Why did you attack us?" He pointed up at the landing alien ships. "Who are they? Why did they attack you?"

"My name is Corporal Vavia Camnis, of the Turian Hierarchy, member species of the Galactic Council," it said. "The reason for our attack was simple, you violated galactic law. Laws that are nearly two-thousand years old and were put in place for the safety of everyone."

"What laws?" General Williams asked, taken aback. He had not expected this. He had expected something more along the aliens of "you alien filth" and "we do not need a reason." Instead, he was about to get legislation quoted at him? "We haven't done anything aggressive. We were just exploring and expanding."

"You activated a dormant Mass Relay," Vavia said. "The Council outlawed the activation of such Relays without express permission. It has been that way long since my kind discovered space flight, and for good reason. The Council and a safety committee that they appoint must weigh the risks of

General Williams's mouth twitched. Ever since they had lost contact with the research fleet, he had wondered why the aliens had attacked them. Maybe they enslaved all sapient races they encountered, maybe they exterminated them. Maybe they had been planning on colonizing Shanxi and were doing all of this in an attempt to drive humanity off the planet. But the war, the riots, the destroyed research ships, his men and he cowering in a cave, it had been none of that. It had been the galactic equivalent of a parking violation.

"You're fucking kidding me," his sergeant said. "That's it? That's all? Hundreds of people are dead because we didn't get permission before flipping a switch?

The Turian stared at her in confusion. "I fail to see what procreation has to do with the current situation. I am not an Asari. But this law is far more serious than simply flipping a switch." One of Vavia's talons pointed upward at the descending ships, which were now spreading out and landing all around the city. General William's heart panged. It looked like they were moving to occupy it, and he had nowhere near enough forces to do anything about it.

"Those are Rachni ships. I don't know how, they're supposed to be extinct, but an entire armada jumped our forces." Beneath her helmet, Valvia made a noise of disgust. "Thousands of years ago, a Mass Relay was activated recklessly. It let them through. A never-ending swarm of sapient insects who swarmed Council worlds for three-hundred years. The law was passed to stop something like this from ever happening again."

"So wait," General Williams said. The Rachni ships were landing now, this taking most of them out of sight. From the few that he could see, a reddish/brownish blur was disembarking from them, swarming towards the colony. "Did we do this?"

The Turian shook its head. "No. Our reports before we came under attack suggest that this came from our side, in the direction of Council space. Either way, it doesn't matter. What your race did was reckless, but the Rachni are a far bigger concern now for all of us. I need access to your communications. My pod was damaged on the way down and I need to report back to the Hierarchy about the developing situation here. We only sent an expeditionary force to deal with you, the entire fleet is needed here."

"Reckless," one of the Marines hissed. "You wanna talk about reckless? How about pissing off us and then crawling to us to help? That sounds pretty reckless to me. Stupid too. General, can we just plug it and strip its pod? Maybe we can work something out with the Rachni. We make it clear that we're not with them and-"

"The Rachni are about to begin swarming one of our colonies soldier," General Williams said coldly. "However many soldiers and civilians the Turians killed, the Rachni are doubtlessly going to break their record sometime in the next half hour. Trust me, I have the same bitter taste in my mouth that you do. Were the situation different, I'd have our friend here in chains, making arrangements to get it to the nearest Alliance interrogation facility. As it stands, our situation has gone from bad to worse."

He took a single step forward, looking at Vavia. "I have no long-range communications. I can get a signal up to orbit, no further. Do you have any surviving ships in orbit that we can bounce the transmission off of?"

"Possibly," Vavia said. "The attack outnumbered us at least three to one, but there could still be survivors, doubtless moving to make an escape attempt."

"Listen to me very carefully," General Williams said. "You will tell them that you have made contact with local ground forces. You will tell them that we will consider helping you fight the Rachni if and only if you immediately cease all hostilities towards us. If not we turtle up and shoot anything that comes anywhere near us. Also, they can consider you to effectively be our hostage. Any hostile actions against us, I give my men the order to put two rounds in the back of your head. We've been starving the last few days because of you, so I get the feeling they'll be fighting over who gets to do the honors."

The mutterings this earned from his men sounded a little too enthusiastic for his taste, but he had made a threat and he was going to stick by it. Vavia, however, was utterly unphased. "Reasonable demands," she said. "She glanced at the nearby cave. "But if that is your headquarters I suggest we move quickly. If there are surviving ships they will most certainly leave the system soon. What's more, the Rachni will most likely investigate where my pod landed."

That made a disturbing amount of sense. He looked to all of his men. "We move camp in ten minutes tops. For the moment, Vavia is our ally. But the second she looks like she is about to betray us, she's our enemy again. And let me be perfectly clear. I'm just as angry as you are about what has happened. But we do not, and let me repeat myself, do not shoot without reason. Understand?" He got a series of firm if reluctant, nods.

"And you," he pointed at Vavia. "I want every last scrap of information you have to give. On your Hierarchy, this Council and the Rachni. You don't leave anything out, no matter how insignificant it might be. Got it?"

"Yes." Vavia's calm voice was becoming a bit insufferable, but he didn't comment.

"Let's make this quick then." He turned to head back into the cave. He wanted to scream. Two alien invasions in less than a month. Being forced to work with one of them. Giant insects swarming an Alliance colony and not a damn thing he could do about it. He had a bad feeling there would be a long way to go before he saw the light at the end of this tunnel.

XXXXX

Author's Note: I struggled with this one. There's a lot of places this story could go, but it's only a one-shot. I went back and forth on a lot of ideas. Turians rescuing the Humans, the Humans teaming up with the Rachni, the Rachni driving the Turians off and talking with the humans, it was tough. I think this was the best way to honor what the patron wanted though, and I hope you enjoyed it yourself.

I would like to thank my Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, Josue Garcia, Jonathan Eason, Ryan Van Schaack, and ChaosSpartan575 for their amazing support.


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